


That Thief That Delays

by pukeandcry



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Concussions, M/M, Misunderstandings, dumbassery, staring contest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-16 15:20:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13638915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukeandcry/pseuds/pukeandcry
Summary: When you lined the pieces of information up like that, one after another, there was only one reasonable conclusion: Auston had clearly been tricked into falling in love with Mitch through prolonged eye contact.The one where Auston thinks he's been hypnotized into falling in love Mitch via staring contest.





	That Thief That Delays

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my gals for looking this foolishness over and helping me figure out how it ends! Loosely inspired by the Leafs staring contest videos, although I clearly rearranged pairs to suit my own interests.

Auston makes it a point not to waste the limited space in his brain on extraneous things. Which, yeah, sounds douchey, but it’s necessary. In the pie chart that is shit Auston can reasonably pay attention to, hockey takes up an ungodly huge slice, with “naps,” “Call of Duty strategies,” and “remembering to call his mom on a semi-regular basis” eating up pretty much the rest.

Weird shit the marketing department makes them do for PR definitely doesn’t make the cut.

Which is why the video he’d filmed the week before with Mitch has gone completely out of his brain when he finishes getting taped up by the physio after practice one day and heads back to the locker room to grab his stuff. Patty and Freddie are both still there, although Freddie is zoned out with his eyes closed. Auston doesn’t know if he’s doing visualizations or just sleeping sitting up.

“What’s up, Dad? You look nice,” he says to Patty, who’s wearing an actual sweater and poking at his hair in a mirror.

“Shooting a thing for PR.”

Auston doesn’t really know why that means Patty had to put on a sweater, but okay.

“You know what they’re gonna have you do?” he asks.

“They’re making us do the staring contest,” Patty says. “They rope you into that one yet?”

“Ah, yeah,” Auston says. “Mitch and I did it last week. He sucked at it.” To be fair, they’d _both_ sucked at it, and had to start it over several times, but Mitch was objectively worse. He gets the giggles way too easily to excel at something like that.

Freddie cracks one eye open then. Not asleep, apparently.

“It’s literally just looking at something,” he says. “I don’t know how someone can be good or bad at that.”

Auston thinks about trying to explain, but decides it’s probably wasted effort. “Good fucking luck to whoever gets paired up with you.”

“Who are you with?” Freddie asks Patty, finally deigning to open his other eye.

“Willie,” Patty says. “He’s around here somewhere, I think.”

Freddie snorts meaningfully, even though Auston isn’t exactly sure what the meaning is.

“It’ll be good,” Patty says generously. “I just hope I don’t end up falling in love with him and having to leave Christina, you know? That’d be awkward.”

“Uh, I mean. Follow your heart, I guess?” Auston loves Patty, but a lot of the time he has no idea what he’s talking about.

It must be mutual, because Patty gives him a look like Auston just whiffed it.

“He means that experiment they did about how you can like, make people fall in love by having them look each other in the eyes for a long time,” Freddie explains. “It, like, forces intimacy or something. I think it’s only supposed to work for strangers, though.”

“Too bad for Willie,” Patty says. “I’m a catch.”

PR intern Morgan sticks her head around the corner, then, telling Patty they’re ready for him, and he goes with her, tapping Auston and Freddie on the head as he goes.

“Is that really a thing?” Auston asks Freddie after a minute.

Freddie just looks at him, and Auston worries for a second that maybe Freddie’s trying to do it to _him_ , but then Freddie does his slow-blink goalie thing and pulls his baseball cap on.

“What do you think?” he asks as he heads for the door.

Which doesn’t fucking help. That’s why Auston had _asked_.

Goalies are the goddamn worst sometimes.

-

Obviously, it’s not a _thing_. You can’t _make_ someone fall in love with someone else. Auston’s pretty sure that would count as like… magic. Or hypnosis, at the very least. Neither of which are real.

Now that Auston thinks about it, though… well. It might explain some stuff.

Such as:

How, earlier in the week, Auston had seen Mitch’s dick in the locker room and, for some reason, thought, _nice_.

Seeing teammates’ dicks is pretty normal, but Auston doesn’t usually have opinions on them either way. And if he _did_ , it seems like it’d probably be, like, Kappy’s. His is – something.

Or how before that he’d been watching Mitch eat cereal in their hotel in Nashville and thought, _I could put my fingers in there_ while staring at Mitch’s gross open mouth, a bizarre shiver of pleasure going through him.

Or how Mitch had been asleep on his shoulder during their last bus ride, snoring and making weird noises and fidgety around, and for some reason Auston had suddenly looked down at his scrunched-up sleeping face and thought: _I wonder when the last time he jerked off was_.

And that was just the weird sex-adjacent stuff. Even more worrying was the _other_ stuff, like when Auston had woken up a few days earlier and gotten inexplicably, disproportionately pissed off that the engineered hardwood floors in his bedroom were really cold on his bare feet. Partially he was just mad that all his socks were balled up near-but-not-in the laundry hamper and smelled like death, but he’d refocused his outrage on the floors.

An hour later, he was showing up unannounced at Mitch’s place, telling him to put on his shoes because they were going to Ikea.

Apparently, Auston doesn’t just want Mitch’s company on boring errands; he actually gives a shit about Mitch’s opinions on area rugs, as evidenced by the new yellow and gray one next to his bed that Auston had thought he’d hated until Mitch had said he’d thought it would look nice.

It had, it turns out.

Or how Auston had basically had – there’s no other word for it – a temper tantrum on their last off day because Mitch had let his phone die and wasn’t answering Auston’s texts.

Or how Auston has a folder of bookmarks on his laptop filled with videos of _Mitch’s_ silkiest goals instead of his own.

Or how Auston’s chest does a dumb, weird thing that’s sort of like heartburn but less unpleasant and substantially hornier when he looks at Mitch the right way.

If Auston’s being honest, that’s probably just the tip of the vaguely obsessive iceberg.

And Auston’s been around; he knows that shit happens when you’re constantly in your teammates’ business. Sometimes you accidentally think about them in a sex-type context; it’s just proximity and hormones. 

And other times, you get into weird codependent bromance situations and end up living in each others’ pockets and sharing your clothes and having a standing brunch date twice a week.

But both those things at once? That was probably a problem.

That was too much like girlfriend shit.

The final straw is when he’s doing one of those get to know the player questionnaires they put in the programs at the ACC, where he’s supposed to fill out a survey so the fans can be charmed by his crappy handwriting or something. He thinks he’s done a pretty good job finding the right balance of dull but still technically honest answers, until he comes to the one that say, _what’s one thing that always makes you happy?_

His stupid fucking hand, like it’s possessed by Satan himself, is trying to write down _Marns’ smile_ before he even knows what’s happening. He only just catches himself, and feels like he just narrowly avoided getting hit by a bus as he scribbles down _taco bell_ instead.

When you lined the pieces of information up like that, one after another, there was only one reasonable conclusion: Auston had clearly been tricked into falling in love with Mitch through prolonged eye contact.

There’s so much shit they don’t warn you about when you get drafted, honestly.

-

Auston has no fucking idea what he’s supposed to do about this new development. If it was anyone else he had a crush on, he’d probably just try and bang them and see if that gets it out of his system – it usually does – but clearly that’s not an option this time. And anyway, if he’s really been hypnotized into falling in _love_ instead of just having some weird crush, it probably wouldn’t do anything even if Auston _did_ get Mitch into bed, except maybe put him at risk of doing something even stupider, like proposing.

As it is, when he sees Mitch at practice chomping on his water bottle and making weird faces while he talks to Marty, Auston trips over a bench. So. Yeah.

He’s probably fucked until he figures out how to undo this.

-

On the other hand, though, it’s not _that_ different, either. The whole team plays like they’re on fucking _fire_ the next night, Mitchy included. When he scores halfway through the second, Auston’s on the bench, but he almost knocks himself out when Mitch launches himself at him during the next break in play.

“Fuckin’ killing it!” he roars in Mitch’s ear, glove on his helmet and free arm around his shoulders. It feels somehow better than Auston’s own goal in the first had, which is – well.

But when Mitch grins that stupid, infectious grin at Auston, he forgets that probably there’s something weird about accidentally falling in love with your teammate. At the moment, all he knows is that Mitch is whooping and hollering and _happy_ , and, like. Fuck everything else, right?

-

When Mitch lets himself into Auston’s hotel room on their next roadie and gets into bed with him, Auston’s first instinct is to be pissed – this _can’t_ be helping his whole situation, honestly – but he only manages to hold on to that for about five seconds. Then Mitch is wedging himself up into the crook of Auston’s shoulder in his stupid soft pajama pants, and Auston’s chest is too busy doing something flip-floppy to remember that this is a bad idea.

“I wanna watch Say Yes to the Dress,” Mitch whines, groping around blindly on the bed until his hand finds the remote.

“You can’t watch it in your own room?” Auston asks, trying to sound harassed. It probably loses something of its effectiveness when he rests his nose in Mitch’s hair, though.

“I wanna watch Say Yes to the Dress with _you_ ,” Mitch says. He finds the remote then, and flicks through all the channels until he finds the one where an episode is just starting. He sighs happily and rests his head against Auston’s chest.

“Why do you know the TLC schedule by heart?”

Mitch just whisper-shouts “shh” at him and turns up the volume. They lie there like that for fifteen minutes, fully roped into the saga of a woman named Ashlynn who wants something “white but not _white_.”

“She should just say ivory,” Mitch scoffs from his spot on Auston’s chest. “That’s what she means.”

“I don’t know what the fuck goes on in your head, buddy,” Auston says. It comes out entirely too fond.

Mitch doesn’t even bother responding to that. Another minute later he makes a distressed noise when Daniella insists on a ballgown.

“She needs a mermaid gown,” he says earnestly.

Auston doesn’t even bother asking. 

When she ends up buying something described as a mermaid gown ten minutes later, though, Mitch preens. “See? Because she has narrow hips, like me. That’s the right silhouette for narrow hips.”

“Yeah. You’d look nice in that,” Auston says, squinting at the woman twirling around on screen. It’s only after it’s out of his mouth that he realizes that that’s maybe a _really fucking weird_ thing to say to a bro, especially when you’re cuddling, _especially_ when you may or may not have been hypnotized into being in love with them, but if Mitch realizes it, he doesn’t let on.

“I know, right?” he says instead happily. Another episode starts, and the way Mitch yawns and cuddles closer makes it clear that they’re in this for the long haul.

At that point Auston kind of figures, well, in for a penny, and gives himself permission to spend the next couple of episodes thinking about Mitch in a wedding dress. An ivory one, not white, and not because he knows Mitch isn’t even close to being a virgin – that’s a stupid rule. Auston just thinks it’d suit him better, is all.

And, you know, if Auston’s already going there, he might as well picture himself as the groom, standing up next to Mitch and shoving a ring over his big knobby knuckle and saying “I do.” In a normal way. It just, like – fleshes out the picture, is all.

Probably.

And if not, he can just… be normal in the morning.

-

Once they’re home, Auston does try to research his – situation. He Googles every fucking version of it he can think of, which results in pretty much no conclusive answers and a weird as shit internet history on his laptop, including _teammate hypnosis accidentally fell in love_ and _too much eye contact with best friend and now i keep thinking about us getting married?_

All that gets him is a bunch of results on applying for a marriage license and where to buy contact lenses online.

He’s overcomplicating it, apparently. He tries to think like Freddie would, and pares it down to _eye contact fall in love_.

That does the trick. Auston rubs the palms of his hands against the knees of his jeans and takes a steadying breath.

It turns out, you don’t just have to stare in a stranger’s eyes; you also have to ask them a series of personal questions while you’re doing it.

That’s comforting, but also, at the same time – well. He reads a list of the questions, and… 

It’s pretty much all shit him and Mitch have talked about at one point or another. Maybe not, like, directly, but still. He might never have sat down and specifically asked Mitch what his deepest fear is, but Auston still knows it’s a tie between spiders getting in his mouth while he’s sleeping and breaking his femur. He knows Mitch would spend his last day on earth at his family’s lakehouse, which seems incredibly lame to Auston, but he guesses that’s not his call. He knows Mitch’s most embarrassing moment and worst memory and a bunch of other shit that, he’s now realizing, probably crossed the coworkers line, like, miles back.

Shit.

What it _doesn’t_ fucking tell him is how to reverse it. Maybe it _can’t_ be reversed, and Auston starts thinking, briefly and hysterically, that he’s going to have to end up asking for a trade. He’s going to have to tell Babs and the rest of management that, sorry, I know you used a first overall on me but now I’m gonna need you to trade me to somewhere very far away because I accidentally looked at Mitch too long and caught feelings, whoops!

How do you even fit that shit on whatever trade request form there is?

There’s only one solution for it: he has to avoid the shit out of Mitch.

It’s not easy, given how much time they have to spend together, so Auston resorts to keeping at least three other teammates between them at all times. On the bus and the plane he sits next to Reemer or Naz, and at meals he either hunkers down next to Patty, or just plants himself alone in a corner.

He’s not sure if Mitch notices, but _Auston_ does. Because, as it turns out, avoiding Mitch really sucks. Apparently they don’t have matching embroidered “besties” toques (that they’re banned from wearing anywhere in public, thanks to Willie and his quote-unquote “dignity”) for no reason. To go from having Mitch around, like, basically all the time to almost not at all is – jarring.

But it’s for the best this way. Whatever weird shit is brewing inside Auston and threatening to fuck shit up with his and Mitch’s friendship, the only way to preempt it is by putting some distance between them.

He’s gotta save their friendship by avoiding Mitch until he’s no longer hypnotized into being in love with him.

That classic paradox.

-

Also, not that he needs more proof that his head’s been supremely fucked with, but when he’s jerking off in the shower the next time they’re in a hotel, somewhere in the process, he starts thinking about Mitch.

Mitch is handsy. Everyone knows it, and everyone’s been victimized by it, but Auston knows maybe the best out of everyone. Mitch can’t watching a half-hour of TV without needing someone to pet his hair or cuddle him or run their nails across his shoulders, and that someone is very often Auston.

Mitch touches Auston like Auston belongs to him. Like he has every right to rest his head on Auston’s stomach when they’re sprawled on a bench, or dig his teeth into Auston’s shoulder.

Fuck. Maybe he does.

Auston _tries_ to distract himself, one hand grasping pointlessly at the tile wall of the shower, but there’s nothing for it. He’s thinking about how Mitch had interrupted his pre-game nap the week before, wriggling under the covers of Auston’s hotel bed in his boxers and a thin Donald Duck t-shirt and just – glued himself up against Auston.

All they’d done was gone to sleep, but now Auston thinks – what if. What if he’d pulled Mitch even closer? What if he’d fit their hips together and moved, drove Mitch into the mattress and made him gasp? What if he’d peeled Mitch’s stupid t-shirt off and touched everywhere Mitch was shockingly solid?

He would have put his thumb up against Mitch’s mouth, waited for him to open it before pressing it against Mitch’s tongue. He would have jerked Mitch off; he would have let Mitch suck his dick, if he wanted to.

Auston’s hand is tight and fast over his dick as he thinks about what Mitch would look like on his knees, waiting for Auston to blow.

He comes so suddenly his knees wobble and he knocks over a bottle of hotel shampoo trying to steady himself.

-

It really sucks, though. It’s not that he doesn’t like his other teammates or anything, and obviously he doesn’t play favorites, but Mitch is his favorite.

Maybe not even his favorite _teammate_. Just in general.

And that’s why he’s gotta fix his shit.

He knows he can’t, like, cut Mitch out entirely. He doesn’t _want_ to, and anyway it wouldn’t work out with the team and stuff. But he knows he can prune back the codependent, non-team shit.

The new rule is going to be, if it’s something he’d do with a girlfriend, he won’t do it with Mitch.

That means playing CoD with Mitch and Hymie and Willie as a group is okay, but brunch with just Mitch is out. He lets himself sit next to Mitch on their next flight, but when Mitch tries to snuggle up against his shoulder and steal the hoodie Auston has draped over him, he pulls away, and a minute later wanders to the back of the plane to join the card game.

It still sucks. He doesn’t _want_ to do any of that shit, but he has to.

A day after they get home from a one and done, Mitch follows Auston to his car after practice. “I’m bored. Come to Canadian Tire with me.”

“Why?” Auston asks, and then immediately corrects himself. “I mean. I don’t think I can.”

“You don’t have plans,” Mitch says with an easy sense of authority. Which – no, maybe not, but still. “I want a little grill for the balcony.”

“You can’t grill, buddy,” Auston says automatically. “Patty banned you after this summer.” 

“Patty’s not my _real_ dad,” Mitch says, smiling with his tongue pressed against his teeth.

“If you say Marty is, I swear.” Auston’s trying not to grin too stupidly.

“I could have other dads. Dads you guys don’t even _know_ about.” Mitch kicks the tire of Auston’s car playfully. “C’mon, come with me. We haven’t hung out in like, an entire _week_. That’s ridiculous.”

The last part seems like it’s supposed to be a joke, but something in Mitch’s voice doesn't quite sell it. He’s still smiling, but it’s sort of wavering.

All Auston wants to do is say “sure” and make Mitch smile for real, which is exactly why he can’t.

“Sorry,” he says, looking down. “Can’t.”

When Mitch’s face falls, just a little, Auston feels cartoonishly villainous. He’s never kicked a puppy, but this is probably more or less what it’s like.

“See you tomorrow, okay?” he says, already fiddling with his keys and getting into his car. Mitch just nods and shoves his hands into his pockets, kind of frowning, but still nods goodbye as Auston pulls away.

At their next morning skate, Mitch doesn’t come over while Auston’s getting changed like he usually does. He nods hello, and doesn’t really say anything to him throughout practice unless he has to. He doesn’t wait around afterwards, and he’s gone by the time Auston finishes changing.

He doesn’t sit by him on the bus, and he doesn’t ask if he wants to get his ass kicked at CoD that night.

That’s – good. That’s what Auston wanted. That’s what needs to happen for him to figure out how to be normal again. Auston reminds himself that this is better than the alternative, and that he’s doing this precisely so they _can_ be friends.

Still makes him feel like a dick, though.

-

“Do you know why Marns just made me spend an hour helping him set up a Tinder profile?” Brownie asks Auston while they’re on the stationary bikes together.

“Uh,” Auston says, tucking his hands up into his sweaty armpits. “No?”

“Well, I do,” Brownie says. “It’s because he’s ‘been abandoned by the person he loves,’ and now he has ‘a void in his life that needs to be filled.’” His air quotes are super aggressive.

“He got dumped?” Auston asks, frowning. “I didn’t even know he was dating anyone.”

That annoys him. Not – not the idea of Mitch dating someone in the first place, because, you know. That would be weird. But that he didn’t _tell_ Auston about it. He thought he knew all of Mitch’s business, pretty much.

Brownie stares at him, flat and unimpressed, before putting on his headphones and pulling his hood up over them. “He wasn’t,” he says, and then proceeds to determinedly ignore Auston.

Auston wishes his teammates would stop making that face at him.

-

In the end, his shitty plan falls apart when Mitch lets himself into Auston’s condo one afternoon, lays on top of him where he’s napping on the couch, and sticks his freezing cold hands up Auston’s sweatshirt. 

“Hey, dumbass,” he says, basically directly into Auston’s mouth. He has no physical boundaries, and it’s probably going to murder Auston someday. “Stop ignoring me. It’s hurting my feelings and Marty’s tired of hearing me whine about it. Apparently.”

A stupid side effect of being in love is the guilty, twisty nausea that shows up in your guts when you do something that makes the other person feel bad. Even when you’ve only been awake for six seconds.

“What?” Auston says, blinking. “I wasn’t.”

Mitch pinches his ribs, really fucking hard. “You were. So stop.”

Auston doesn’t blush. He doesn’t do anything, and _definitely_ doesn’t feel a bloom of relief that he’s being forced to drop this whole plan, as good intentioned as it was. “Whatever,” he says instead. “Are you here to nap or just give me bruises?”

“Are you gonna keep making me sad?” Mitch asks. And Jesus, that’s low. Auston kind of wants to punch himself. Being in love is _stupid_.

“No,” he says, and scoots over, making room for Mitch to worm his way in between Auston and the back of the sofa. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Mitch says easily, and Auston knows he _means_ it. Mitch couldn’t hold a grudge if his life depended on it. It’s one of the things he’s been running over in his mental list of Mitch’s Greatest Hits, including how he makes perfect grilled cheeses and always smells pretty good for a hockey player.

“I was just – it wasn’t you,” Auston says. His arm is around Mitch’s shoulder, and he wants to kick himself in the nuts when he thinks _that feels right_. “My head was just being all… weird. Sorry.”

“Just cut it out and we’re cool,” Mitch says, clearly already over it. “Go to sleep.” He yawns, a jaw-breakingly wide one, and Auston once again accidentally thinks: _put your thumb in there and touch his molars._

Being in love is, honestly, pretty disgusting.

-

After that Auston realizes that if he can’t avoid Mitch until the problem resolves itself, he’s gonna need outside help, preferably from someone who isn’t a disaster on a personal level.

Unfortunately for him, that rules out most of his teammates. As he sees it, Auston’s options are Marty, who will probably end up going on a “that’s my son” style rampage on Auston the second he mentions impure thoughts towards Mitch – even ones that are the PR department’s fault more than anyone’s – and Freddie.

After Marty blows him off three times in a row, Auston sighs, and corners Freddie.

“Unhypnotize me,” he says. They’re in one of the lounges at the practice rink, Freddie carefully bouncing a rubber ball against the wall.

“I don’t know what that means,” he says, refolding his legs, not looking at Auston. The ball goes _thunk_.

“When Patty was filming the staring contest video. You said that when people make eye contact they get tricked into falling in love,” Auston says. It comes out more accusatory than it probably should; Freddie isn’t, like, personally responsible for that phenomenon. Probably.

“That is… incredibly not what I said,” Freddie says, a weird half-smile curling across his mouth.

“It _basically_ is.”

Freddie closes his eyes, throws the ball again, and catches it.

“I’m serious,” Auston says after a minute. “Use your like… goalie powers on me, dude. I’m being all weird around Mitch.”

That, at least, gets Freddie to open his eyes, and in fact, even turn his body towards Auston.

“From the staring contest video,” Auston adds. Just to be clear.

“And now you think that weirdness is because…”

“It tricked me into falling in love with him.” Auston wishes it sounded less stupid when you say it out loud like that. “I mean, I think part of it is because – the questions you’re supposed to ask too, like, that’s all stuff I already know about Mitch, so maybe it was like, a – a.”

“Cumulative effect,” Freddie offers for him when he trails off.

“Yeah,” Auston agrees, not completely sure what that means.

Freddie nods, seeming to mull it over for a while. After a minute, he stands up, walks over to Auston, and crouches down in front of him so that they’re at eye level, their faces very close.

He looks steadily at Auston, long enough that he starts to feel a little uncomfortable, but he figures this must be part of the process. He just needs to sit still, let Freddie do whatever he’s doing, and then he can go hang out with Mitch and everything will be normal.

A moment later, Freddie slowly lifts one hand up and holds it in front of Auston’s face. Auston braces himself for some weird Freddie voodoo, hoping it’ll at least be effective, and that’s when Freddie slaps him on the head, hard.

“You’re an idiot,” he says mildly, standing up and walking away, leaving Auston with a stinging between his eyes and absolutely no help at all.

-

Three days later, Mo asks Auston to come get lunch with him after practice. It feels like a trap, but Auston can’t figure out a way to get out of it, so he follows Mo back downtown from Etobicoke.

Mo takes him to a sushi place, because Mo always wants fucking sushi. Auston has no idea how the fuck anyone actually manages to walk away feeling full on single bites of raw fish and rice. He’s gonna have to get a burger on the way home.

“Thanks for lunch,” he says warily when their appetizers come, poking at what looks like a tiny octopus, suction cups and all. He’s not fucking eating that, what the fuck?

“I had a reason,” Mo tells him, and then like a fucking lunatic, he puts the whole tentacle-y thing in his mouth. Jesus.

“Do I wanna know what it was?” Auston asks him.

“Freddie,” Mo says. “He said you asked him to un-hypnotize you out of being in love with Mitch.” He looks like the visual representation of a migraine, having to say this stuff out loud. “And then he said someone needed to talk sense into you, which was ‘a Mo problem.’”

“I...” Auston starts, but doesn't really know what else to say to that. Technically, he can’t argue any of it.

“Why is everything always a Mo problem?” Mo asks, and then eats another octopus tentacle.

Auston wonders if you can teleport yourself out of your body through sheer force of will.

“It’s just a – a weird thing,” he grits out uncomfortably. “I’m figuring out how to fix it.” He isn’t, really, but in no way does he feel bad about lying if it means this conversation will end quickly.

“You know that’s not how it works, though, right?” Mo asks mildly. “Like. Love.”

Auston shoves his chopstick through a ball of wasabi with vengeance. He means to tell Mo to fuck off, but when he opens his mouth what comes out is, “Then why do I want to hold his hand all the time?” He stabs the wasabi again. He can’t believe he’s having this conversation. “Or, like… do all this girlfriend shit like – like ask if he wants a drawer in my condo for his sweatpants.” He’s getting vaguely hysterical now. “Why do I want to kiss him?”

“If you’re having, uh. Feelings for Mitch… that’s, like. Okay. But it isn’t because you lost a staring contest.” Mo’s voice is very earnest; it makes Auston want to die.

“Yes it is,” Auston insists. Because it _has_ to be.

“Then why aren’t I having this conversation with Patty and Willie? Or Reemer and Bozie?” Mo asks. Beneath the rhetorical question, Auston can definitely hear some existential despair.

“Because – because they aren’t close like Mitch and I are,” Auston insists. “You have to, like… talk about personal stuff, too, not just make eye contact. Which Mitch and I have. Not on purpose, but just because we’re… we’re together a lot. We know stuff about each other.”

Mo shakes his head, smiling down at his plate. “Alright,” he says, although he clearly doesn’t buy it. “But even if that’s what happened, man, you gotta fix this shit with Mitch.”

“We’re okay,” Auston protests. “We’re hanging out like normal.” Now, at least.

Mo gives him a look. “If anything about all this was normal, would we be having this conversation?” 

Auston scowls, because – yeah, okay.

“I’m just saying. It’s messing with you, and you gotta get it straightened out. Don’t be an idiot, okay?”

Auston wants to knock over the little teapot full of soy sauce on their table, or maybe chuck it through the window.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Can we drop this now? If I promise to talk to Mitch?”

“Oh God, yes,” Mo says, his relief palpable. “We can literally never talk about it again.”

“I would love that,” Auston says darkly, and switches his chopsticks for a fork.

-

Auston really does mean to talk to Mitch about it. Not only because he doesn’t want a repeat of Mo lecturing him over raw fish, but because unfortunately, Mo was right. Not about Auston being an idiot, but about the current state of affairs being unsustainable.

The only silver lining he can see is that if anyone in the world is likely to accept sudden love hypnosis at its face value without thinking Auston’s lost his mind, it’s Mitch.

He really does mean to. And then he gets his fucking concussion.

Patty’s the one who takes him home after the staff doctors give him the official word. He sets Auston up on his sofa, closes all the blinds, brings him water and a pillow, and hides the remote for the TV with an apologetic smile before heading out.

Auston’s head fucking _hurts_ , he wants to puke, and if he thinks at all about how bad this could turn out to be, he might lose it.

Fortunately, he’s asleep before he can spiral too badly.

When he wakes up, Mitch is sitting next to him.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Auston says, startling hard enough to jostle his head, setting off a new wave of nausea.

“Oh shit,” Mitch says, leaning forward, and then drops his voice to a stage whisper. “I mean, oh shit.” He puts out his hands like he wants to do something with them, but can’t figure out what, and just ends up rearranging the blanket that’s over Auston. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Auston tries to sit up a little bit, which doesn’t go _too_ horribly. His head only swims a little bit. “What, uh. What are you doing here?”

Auston’s muzzy and confused and Mitch looks soft and fluffy with his sweatshirt and awkwardly-dried hair. He kind of really wants to lean into it, tuck his face against Mitch and ask him to pet his hair.

“I was worried, dumbass!” Mitch says. His voice is kind of shrieky, even while he’s clearly trying to stay quiet. “You were gone before we even got done with media and I was _worried_ and they wouldn’t even let me _call_ you because of, like, screens and noise and whatever.”

“I’m okay,” Auston says. He’s too tired and in too much pain to resist preening, just a little bit, under Mitch’s attention, and the fact that he’d been worried about him. Even though he knows it’s a fucking dumb idea.

“You have a concussion,” Mitch says miserably, the same way he’d probably say _you have twelve knives stabbed into you_.

“So they say,” Auston says, trying for a laugh that comes out weak.

It just makes Mitch glare at him, unimpressed.

“I’m staying the night,” Mitch insists. And that – Auston frowns at that.

“You don’t need to.”

“Well, I’m gonna anyway.” Mitch makes a face that he clearly thinks is intimidating.

Auston knows he should argue. Having Mitch fussing over him, spending the night in his house, _looking_ at Auston all concerned and frowny and soft… even with his swollen brain, Auston knows that’s not gonna be good for his situation.

He should tell Mitch to leave. He _should_.

“You didn’t stay with Zaits or Hains when they got hurt,” he says instead, kind of slowly.

Mitch laughs weirdly. “Yeah, well, I’m not–” He cuts himself off abruptly, and blushes.

Auston’s brain feels like it’s on a time delay. “What?”

Mitch throws his hands up. “Are you kidding me? You know why, dude.”

“I do not know anything,” Auston says honestly.

“I’m not fucking gone for them like I am for you,” Mitch says. His voice is still weird. “Dumbass.”

“You’re – what?” Auston asks, blinking. His concussion must be worse than they thought. He wonders if this is the sort of thing he’s supposed to tell the med staff about: _hallucinated that my big crush on Mitchy was reciprocated_. Probably not a good symptom.

“C’mon, man.” Mitch sounds genuinely a little distraught now. “I, like. Love you or whatever. In a romance type way.” He groans a little, and puts his face in his hands, and Auston – _oh_.

“Oh,” he says out loud. He reaches out and wraps his fingers around Mitch’s wrist, peeling one hand away.

“I know it’s weird,” Mitch says. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Auston says, rubbing his thumb over Mitch’s wrist, hoping it’s a little comforting. Clearly Mitch hasn’t put the pieces together yet like Auston has. “It’s the staring contest.”

Mitch moves his other hand off his face. “It’s – what now?”

Auston sighs. “That staring contest we did,” he explains. “Apparently that’s how you make people fall in love. It’s like hypnosis or something.”

Mitch face goes through several weird, unreadable expressions. “Jesus,” he says. “That hit really _did_ scramble your eggs.”

“No it didn’t,” Auston protests. “Or, well, it did, but that’s – separate. Look. Freddie told me about it, how there’s this experiment where you can make two people fall in love if they look each other in the eyes for a long time. They’re supposed to ask each other personal questions too, and I know we didn’t do that part, but I looked it up and it’s all stuff we’ve talked about at _some_ point, so. That’s probably why we feel like we’re, uh… in love with each other.”

There’s a long pause while Mitch’s face does some more weird stuff. “ _We_?” he asks.

“Well, I mean,” Auston says, scowling down at his lap. His hand is still around Mitch’s wrist. He should let go. “Yeah.”

“Is, uh. Is that why you were ghosting me? Earlier?” Mitch isn’t pulling his hand away.

“I was trying to fix it,” Auston says, forcing himself to look up. He can make eye contact with Mitch while he says this. He’s a grown up. “When I figured out that I was. You know.”

“In love with me?” Mitch says, a little dazedly.

“Yeah. I was trying to… I don’t know. Figure out how to be normal again. I didn’t realize it got you too, though.”

Mitch looks at him for an uncomfortably long time, and then starts laughing. It takes over his whole body pretty much immediately, and he winds up hunched over as his shoulders shake silently.

Auston doesn’t see what’s funny about any of this.

“Oh my God,” Mitch finally says when he picks his head up. His eyes are a little watery from laughing. “You’re so fucking _dumb_. I love a dumbass.”

“I’m not dumb,” Auston whines, even as his stomach flip-flops.

“You are insanely dumb,” Mitch says, and then he leans forward, pulling his wrist free and then resting his hand on Auston’s cheek. “Eye contact hypnosis, what the fuck?” He’s really close.

“It makes sense,” Auston says, although he can feel his conviction kind of deflating. It _does_ sound kind of stupid.

“Sure, bud,” Mitch says placatingly. “Hey. I’m gonna kiss you. Hold still.”

So Auston does.

Mitch’s lips are chapped, and his hands are kind of cold, even though it feels nice on Auston’s warm cheeks. He makes a stupid noise, because he’s kissing Mitch, and if anything made any sense at all it would be disappointing, unable to live up to all the ways Auston’s imagined it, the weird impulses he keeps having to get as close to Mitch as possible and not let him go. Now that it’s happening, it should fall short.

It doesn’t. It’s _great_ , and Auston doesn’t want to stop, maybe ever. So he kisses back, rests his hands on Mitch’s waist, and hopes this isn’t an especially life-ruining dream or hallucination.

When they finally pull apart, Auston feels dazed in a new, non-concussion way. He knows what he should say: _We shouldn’t do this_ , or _it’s just the hypnosis,_ or even _I have a head injury_. “Go again,” he says instead, and pulls Mitch back in.

He’s still getting used to the thrill of being able to touch Mitch, to taste him, when Mitch laughs again, just a little, right up against Auston’s lips.

“Really, though,” Mitch mumbles into his mouth. He pulls away, just slightly. “A staring contest? Did you really think that’s what it was?”

“I mean,” Auston says.

Mitch shakes his head, smiling his dumb smile. “Buddy. This is just how we are.” He leans in, kissing Auston again, still smiling. “Hypnosis, I swear to God.”

“Shut up,” Auston says, and kisses him again.

Mitch shifts closer, ending up practically in Auston’s lap by the time they’re both panting a little. Auston didn’t think you could get turned on so soon after getting a head injury – usually those aren’t exactly compatible sensations – but here he is.

“Oh my God, wait. This is fucking awful,” Mitch says, pulling back.

Auston frowns. That seems a little harsh. “Hey.”

“No! No, I mean, like.” Mitch bites his lip. He’s flushed unevenly across his cheeks and his nose. “It’s just – I really wanted to do, uh… all of this, and now I am, except – you have a concussion. So…”

Auston looks down, at the miniscule space between them and Mitch’s hands, knuckles going white where he’s clenching them into the blanket. They’re both visibly at least halfway hard in their sweatpants.

“Oh,” he says, feeling stupid and also violently disappointed. Does that mean he gets to kiss Mitch but nothing else? Because, like, Jesus. That doesn’t seem fair.

“We can wait until you’re better,” Mitch says with all the enthusiasm of someone volunteering to chop off their own pinkie finger. “To do, like. Anything else. That’s probably the smart thing.”

Auston has thought about touching Mitch’s dick in the last month more than just about anything else, and also, he loves Mitch. The fuck he’s waiting.

And it’s not like anyone has ever accused either of them of being geniuses.

“Fuck that,” he says. “Just, like. Be careful.”

He thinks he’s gonna have to sell Mitch on it a little, but all he does is blink a few times at Auston, and then nod furiously before kissing him again.

Auston can tell Mitch is trying not to move him at all, being so careful and deliberate; or at least, as careful as he can while still getting his hands under Auston’s sweatshirt, biting at his jaw and trying to take his clothes off at the same time.

At the moment, Auston doesn’t really give a shit. He lifts his hips up when Mitch pulls his sweats down, not even bothering to feel self conscious about how hard he is. Mitch looks like he’s in pretty much the same state, anyway, when Auston yanks pointedly at his shirt and gets Mitch to pull it off, his sweatpants next.

They’re both naked, both hard, and Auston thinks he’s going to die when Mitch slides off the couch and kneels between his legs.

“Hold, like, incredibly still,” Mitch says, his fingers on top of Auston’s thighs. “Seriously, I don’t wanna fuck your head up giving you a blow job.”

Auston tries to say something to that, but just ends up moaning something garbled.

Mitch is careful and deliberate when he leans in, pressing a kiss against Auston’s thigh. He stays there, trailing his fingers along Auston’s dick for a minute, taking his time. Auston’s hips are starting to press up without his permission, and when Mitch’s fingers tighten around him he thinks he could come, like, embarrassingly soon.

When Mitch leans down and gets his mouth on Auston’s cock, it’s all he can do not to throw his head back against the arm of the couch. He only manages to stop because he has the coherency to think: _protect your brain so you can do this again as soon as possible_.

Mitch sucks him off enthusiastically, messily, and it’s going to be over really, really fast. Auston is shifting and making noises and trying _so_ hard not to move his head very much, but Mitch’s mouth is hot and tight and if it’s not the _best_ blowjob Auston’s ever gotten, it might be the most devastatingly enthusiastic.

He closes his eyes, tries to pin his hips to the couch so he doesn’t choke Mitch, and comes.

It’s a moment before he comes back to himself enough to say words. Mitch is still between his spread legs, forehead resting against Auston’s thigh, panting wetly.

“Shit,” Auston says, because he didn’t, like. Warn Mitch, at all. Just shot off in his mouth. “Shit, sorry, I should have–”

He looks down, then, and sees Mitch’s arm working frantically as he jerks himself off, head still resting against Auston’s leg like he couldn’t lift it up if he tried.

“Oh,” he says, and tentatively reaches a hand down, running it through Mitch’s hair. He tries tightening it, just for a moment, and Mitch _whines_.

“Are you gonna –” Auston tries to ask. His mouth and his brain feel disconnected, but he knows Mitch is panting and squirming, his arm flexing as he jerks off, and as hot as that is, if he misses this, Auston is going to be _so_ pissed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Mitch chants.

Auston reaches down, grabs Mitch’s forearm and stops him. “Up,” he says, squirming over. “Up. On me.”

Mitch lets himself be manhandled, a little dazedly, and ends up kneeling next to Auston, his cock pink and flushed where Auston can see it as Mitch jacks himself off.

“On me,” Auston repeats, fitting his hand over Mitch’s as he works himself, and then Mitch groans, coming hot all over Auston’s stomach.

They stay like that for a long time, neither of them moving, just panting and trying to kiss and mostly just clumsily bumping their noses together while they get it together. Eventually, Mitch gets it together enough to reach down for Auston’s t-shirt and wipe them both off.

Auston thinks about protesting – he doesn’t want to do laundry any time soon, fuck – but then Mitch is kissing him again

“Is your brain okay?” Mitch asks. “Besides being dumb as hell, I mean.”

Auston ignores him. “I think so.” He hasn’t jostled it, hasn’t really moved much, and as far as he can tell, hasn’t done anything that would aggravate it too much.

“Good. Do you wanna go to bed?” Mitch asks. Something self-conscious comes over his face. “Uh, I mean. I don’t have to stay, if you just want to rest…”

Auston rolls his eyes, which hurts. “Don’t be an idiot,” he says, and then holds his hand out, waiting for Mitch to help him up off the couch and lead him down the hall.

It’s nice to know he’s not the only dumbass here.

-

“Just so you know,” Mitch says as they settle into Auston’s bed. “I’ve had it bad for you since way before we did that dumb video. So.”

Auston feels tempted to smother Mitch with his pillow. Instead he thinks about that for a second.

Technically, nothing about what he _felt_ for Mitch was any different after the staring contest, or even after Freddie mentioned the whole eye contact thing. That’s just when he started thinking about it differently, noticing all the little things that had been adding up for a long time into one bigger thing.

Maybe the only difference was having a frame of reference for what that big thing might be.

“Ugh,” he says, scowling so he doesn’t smile. “I guess I have too.”

Mitch’s grin is so goofy, though, that Auston can’t help but mirror it.

He lets Mitch fuss over them for a little while, propping Auston’s neck and shoulders with pillows to his heart’s content, making sure there’s water and painkillers and everything next to the bed. When he’s finally satisfied, he curls up next to Auston, tugging the comforter over them.

“Hey,” Mitch says. He angles his face so he’s looking straight into Auston’s eyes, drawing in his eyebrows and staring. “What happens if I do this? Do we go back to just being bros who aren’t in love and want to suck each other’s dicks?”

“Fuck off,” Auston says, smiling despite himself. “That isn’t how it works.”


End file.
